What does Sam Harris mean by saying that religions are failed sciences?

[Belacqua]

To me, religion is the result of the corruption of something that originated from science, and the reason it happens is because there are greedy people who want wealth, power, and control (or already have it and want more), and will lie, cheat, and steal to get it. It's something that I think has been happening ever since the dawn of mankind (a couple million years ago), it has been happening ever since, is happening today, and will continue to happen in the foreseeable future.

I'm curious about this... What is the science which existed prior to religion? Do you have some examples? In what way was it corrupted to become religion? 

The word "science" in its modern sense started in the 18th century. Before that when people investigated the world it was called natural philosophy. The separation of what we call science from what we call philosophy is quite recent. And philosophy was largely integrated with religion for most of that time.

Some branches of science got started in practices that were intrinsically involved in religion. For example, the desire for improved astrology motivated astronomy. (Remember that Kepler served as court astrologer for the Holy Roman Empire.) Alchemy was founded on various Neoplatonic beliefs that we would call religious today, but which gave rise to modern chemistry eventually, after much weeding and sorting. (See the history of Paracelsus.) 

So I don't understand why you put science first, as if it had a pure uncorrupted state before religion came in.

[neil]

To me, religion is the result of the corruption of something that originated from science, and the reason it happens is because there are greedy people who want wealth, power, and control (or already have it and want more), and will lie, cheat, and steal to get it. It's something that I think has been happening ever since the dawn of mankind (a couple million years ago), it has been happening ever since, is happening today, and will continue to happen in the foreseeable future.

I'm curious about this... What is the science which existed prior to religion? Do you have some examples? In what way was it corrupted to become religion? 

The word "science" in its modern sense started in the 18th century. Before that when people investigated the world it was called natural philosophy. The separation of what we call science from what we call philosophy is quite recent. And philosophy was largely integrated with religion for most of that time.

Some branches of science got started in practices that were intrinsically involved in religion. For example, the desire for improved astrology motivated astronomy. (Remember that Kepler served as court astrologer for the Holy Roman Empire.) Alchemy was founded on various Neoplatonic beliefs that we would call religious today, but which gave rise to modern chemistry eventually, after much weeding and sorting. (See the history of Paracelsus.) 

So I don't understand why you put science first, as if it had a pure uncorrupted state before religion came in.

Perhaps you're right and I'm wrong, and I should've said philosophy rather than science.

Generally, I like to try to focus on examining the big picture and not get hung up with quibbling or semantics, but this is an online forum where the audience is broad and diverse.

I'm thinking of science in the sense of its fundamental, underlying scope, intent, and purpose, not from the perspective of how much we've progressed with our skills in advanced scientific understanding, or how we've been able to develop the technology we have achieved today.

You give the example of astronomy for the sake of improving astrology; I don't know if that was its original, true, or only purpose, but let's go with that. Did something before astrology lead up to its development in the first place? I have my doubts that one day human beings just started rollin' with astrology without any rhyme or reason.

There are some general examples, that I can think of, involving applications of astronomical patterns for practical purposes, such as navigation (both by land and by sea), farming, gathering, and hunting. Astronomy today is used scientifically for those purposes even today, and who's to say that early human beings weren't also applying this concept in some way (perhaps at an instinctive level), even if they didn't grasp modern day concepts of astronomy or the vocabulary didn't exist back then. A moth navigates using the moon, and it doesn't need to know anything about what the moon is, what it's doing, how it got there, etc.

I learned about how this story of Jesus (the "son of God") rising from the dead after 3 days actually originated for the pattern of the sunrise or sunset taking place at the same point along the horizon from "Part I: The Greatest Story Ever Told" of Peter Joseph's "Zeitgeist: The Movie". Here's an example of something that's actually useful for early humans/farmers to know in order to best determine the yearly pattern of what days to start planting seeds, gathering crops (etc.) in order to maximize crop yields - thus having more food, that was turned into something for religion.

Such awareness early on about the relationship and pattern between the Earth (or the horizon, back then) and the Sun was probably originally a trade secret, so farmers could make bank on the market; this was probably what actual O.G. esoteric knowledge really was, back then, which over time deteriorated or corrupted itself into something in the form of a myth, superstition, or religion (as an example).

This is my personal interpretation/comprehension/opinion of what the deal is - it's not meant to be exactly accurate factual material, per se.

[Belacqua]

Perhaps you're right and I'm wrong, and I should've said philosophy rather than science.

Generally, I like to try to focus on examining the big picture and not get hung up with quibbling or semantics, but this is an online forum where the audience is broad and diverse.

I'm thinking of science in the sense of its fundamental, underlying scope, intent, and purpose, not from the perspective of how much we've progressed with our skills in advanced scientific understanding, or how we've been able to develop the technology we have achieved today.

You give the example of astronomy for the sake of improving astrology; I don't know if that was its original, true, or only purpose, but let's go with that. Did something before astrology lead up to its development in the first place? I have my doubts that one day human beings just started rollin' with astrology without any rhyme or reason.

There are some general examples, that I can think of, involving applications of astronomical patterns for practical purposes, such as navigation (both by land and by sea), farming, gathering, and hunting. Astronomy today is used scientifically for those purposes even today, and who's to say that early human beings weren't also applying this concept in some way (perhaps at an instinctive level), even if they didn't grasp modern day concepts of astronomy or the vocabulary didn't exist back then. A moth navigates using the moon, and it doesn't need to know anything about what the moon is, what it's doing, how it got there, etc.

I learned about how this story of Jesus (the "son of God") rising from the dead after 3 days actually originated for the pattern of the sunrise or sunset taking place at the same point along the horizon from "Part I: The Greatest Story Ever Told" of Peter Joseph's "Zeitgeist: The Movie". Here's an example of something that's actually useful for early humans/farmers to know in order to best determine the yearly pattern of what days to start planting seeds, gathering crops (etc.) in order to maximize crop yields - thus having more food, that was turned into something for religion.

Such awareness early on about the relationship and pattern between the Earth (or the horizon, back then) and the Sun was probably originally a trade secret, so farmers could make bank on the market; this was probably what actual O.G. esoteric knowledge really was, back then, which over time deteriorated or corrupted itself into something in the form of a myth, superstition, or religion (as an example).

This is my personal interpretation/comprehension/opinion of what the deal is - it's not meant to be exactly accurate factual material, per se.

OK, I see what you mean now. That makes a lot of sense. 

If we think of science, or the beginnings of science, as practical know-how, then I agree that it must have come along early. So how to navigate by the stars, or where you're most likely to find root vegetables, or what time of year the fish will come back -- stuff like that could pre-date anything we call religion.

I guess I was thinking of science in a more grandiose way, as explanations for why those things occur. This would involve forming theories that aren't immediately obvious to observation. To navigate by the stars you don't have to know whether the universe is eternal or created, what the stars are made of, etc. etc. It's enough that they're there and it works. 

People probably knew that lightning and thunder could be a sign of impending rain, before they formed any explanation for what causes those things. Once they start theorizing about the unseen causes, then that's different.

[The Grand Nudger]

What people today tend to be thinking of when they say that religion is a sort of pre science, is superstition. As above, ala astrology.

The idea that the position of the lights in the sky has an effect on our lives represents a belief about how the world does work, and gives us a motivation for what we believe to be practical observation making, but not how it should be. Astrology may be a "pre science" but it's not a religion or a pre religion...and we appear to have known about astronomy and animal behavior looooong before astrology was a twinkle in anyone's eye.

We find a system of tally and dot marks on upper paleolithic euoropean cave art that we believe represents a pre-writing calendar/field guide. This would make that cave art proto writing a "pre science" without the superstition, even. A rudimentary synthesis of zoology and astronomy (and also....the first known grocery list).

Personally, I think that superstitious narratives about facets of the natural world arose from or as mnemonic devices and the more elaborate religious narratives about the same tend to be social power grabs that don't appear to have popped up until the neolithic. We assume these religions predate the neolithic, in oral form - and we immediately return to the mnemonic hypothesis. If I tell you about kings playing chess on fine grain sand the important details of the story have nothing to do with any of it's literal or explicit (in the case of oral transmission) content. My kids grew up with an elaborate mythology about the holidays (some of them novel to our family) that amount to much the same.

[Anomalocaris]

Anything that attempts to provide an explanation for nature event can be considered “pre-science”,  in the sense it exploits the same cognative need for knowing the underlying reason in order to better anticipate, that is the also the reason for science.      But that is the same as calling the doodle of infants who can’t speak “pre-writing”.      However,  to actually call religion “pre-science” and thinking it is the equivalent of infant’s “pre-writing” is to willfully disguise its most salient attribute.

The direct equivalent of religion is not the innocent doodle of an infant that could neither speak nor write.      The direct equivalent of religion is an illiterate huckster who pretends he could write and charges his illiterate victims an arm and a leg for nonsense scribbles while pretending to write for them on their behalf.    That is the most salient attribute of religion which its apologist will attempt to exploit every apparent opportunity to deny.

[The Grand Nudger]

The turning point here is whether or not the stories arose -as- the explanation, or whether the stories arose as a way of communicating a pre-existing understanding. I, personally, think it's crystal clear that the latter is the case. We had tons of explanations. Right and wrong. What we needed was a way to solidify and communicate them. This presents itself to us as a neolithic explosion of religiosity, but it's not as if.... by the telling of a particular story in a particular way.... we learned anything about the natural interactions we already had 40-210k years of experience and observation with. Direct, personal, intimate, and consequential experience. At least 40k years of which we apprehended as fully modern human beings.

[Anomalocaris]

also whether the story is focused on communicating preexisting understanding, or merely leverage preexisting understanding as a convenient crutch to make some new but central-for its-own-purpose story sound more credible by making it appear fresh bullshit had basis in immemorial knowledge.

[Anomalocaris]

Genesis was not conceived to communicate immemorial misconception about what came before.    it was conceived to borrow the status of preexisting misconception about what came before to perpetuate the rule of hereditary priestly class amongst the jews.

[Anomalocaris]

genesis is as much “pre-science” as the book of mormons.

[Prycejosh1987]

Science also has failures. But scientsists keep these things secret. Religion only becomes true and make sense when it is understood.